Wednesday, 30 April 2014

principles of acting

Adding movement and stage blocking to our Agamemnon scripts

bold words= my lines

Today we focused on page 17, we carried on from where we left off from page 16 where we all scatter out from "disband the fleet" from there we all stand there until the line "he chose his course" we all move in together for the sacrifice scene with Zoe who plays Agamemnon's daughter, she needs to be lifted by some of our classmates I'm not one of them but I stand there and react to what's going on in the sacrifice spread round the front of the stage whilst the others are lifting Zoe as if she is on the sacrifice table, I have to act like I cant do anything my hands are tied if the gods need a sacrifice then it needs to be done this explains the line where we all shout "wait" as if its a second thought like we don't need to do this or do we do this It's not really the right thing to do I really emphasise this part in my voice and facial expressions to show how I think my character would react like, we continue reacting to what's happening with Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter until my line cues her death and Zoe falls backwards and the other classmates behind her catching her the cue line is "her murderers with, why?" this line basically is Iphigenia (the daughter) pleading to the others with why me why did I have to die she is pleading for them to do something to save her from the sacrifice. when the line "the vision passes I see no more" we all scatter out again from our old positions into our new ones and whilst Clytemnestra says her part about how she is so angry about the sacrifice and how her daughter didn't deserve to die she had so much to live for whilst this happens the rest of us react to her words feeling bad and how she shouldn't of died and we could of saved her, with this part I really tried to put a lot of emotion in my face as if I'm looking back on a memory of the daughter being killed and showing the disgust and guilt on my face also grabbing my neck as if remembering them slitting her throat I really feel in my character at this point in the script, as if I've really experienced this horrific sacrifice. At the end of Clytemnestra's part she moves round to the other side to make an announcement as if she's about to make an announcement, us as the villagers we are being two faced and sarcastic towards her but some others like myself are really interested in what she has to say about the news of the war maybe or something else important, my line is "shh!" I really put emphasis on this line as if I'm really angry that they're talking because I want to hear what she has to say, after this part of the script Clytemnestra says "our armies have taken troy" we all react to being relieved and happy that the war is over and our soldiers are coming back from the 10year war some of us ask when or how she simply answers "the very night before this glorious day" we all shout a tribal shout as if cheering on and celebrating that we've won the war. we then stop from here we chose to end the script from here because we didn't have enough rehearsals to finish of the rest of the script because of the variety show and it was appropriate and the story still made sense to end it here. We then went through what we did before and practiced it all together. I loved this script it really made me come out more with my acting also to experiment with my character, its taught me to not be embarrassed and to just try my best to show emotions both facially and physically its important that we try and do both, its definitely helped me pick up new skills that will help me improve my acting later on in future scripts and characters. I really put a lot of emotion Into my character to how they are feeling in the sacrifice and guilt parts of the scripts I think this helped me develop the character more to almost get a feel of what they're feeling, to show there emotions and how they might of felt in certain scenes and made my character and performance effective to an audience, my lines I made into my own I stuck with the original words I just added my own developed character to it and add in the themes of that section of the script and already my lines have more character and emotions to them., which will make them more appealing to an audience.